The present invention relates to integrated circuit design, and more specifically, to modifying an integrated circuit design in response to an engineering change order.
During a design process for integrated circuits, functional specifications are often modified in the late stages of the design process. This typically occurs after placement and routing are completed. Unfortunately, circuit designers are left to manually process such modifications manually or to start the design process again from the beginning, both of which can be costly. Hence, it would be welcomed by circuit design organizations, if automated processes were developed to implement integrated circuit design modifications that minimized or limited the number of circuit changes required to implement the modifications, especially if the modifications require structural changes.